University of Wisconsin Oshkosh faculty, staff and students can enjoy a little light reading over the holidays with Polk Library’s recent addition of the Elsevier’s Science Direct Freedom Collection.

The collection provides the full text of more than 1,700 journals from 2006 to the present, including such titles as “Matrix Biology,” “Leadership Quarterly” and “Clinical Simulation in Nursing.”

“Two of Polk Library’s highest priorities are to provide faculty and students with the best published scholarship available and make it easy to use online,” said Patrick Wilkinson, Polk Library director.

“The Science Direct Freedom Collection makes available highly respected scientific research to our students and faculty regardless of their location. With an Internet connection, they can use this anywhere they are in the world,” he said.

Ron Hardy, the library’s head of information resources, negotiated the agreement with Elsevier, a top worldwide publisher of scientific research.

“The content of the collection, which is especially strong in the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and the social sciences and humanities, is quite exclusive and not easily found elsewhere,” Hardy said.

Science Direct was the single-most requested resource by UWO faculty members, he added.

The new collection already has come in handy for Jennifer Mihalick, a UWO associate professor of chemistry.

“The library’s inter-library loan service is very good at obtaining articles and books that I need for my research, but when I had an impending deadline for a grant proposal, being able to search for and read the latest publications instantly through Science Direct made a huge difference,” she said. “The new collection is a great complement to our electronic collection of American Chemical Society Journals.”

Science Direct is accessible via a drop-down menu from a list of search tools found on the library’s home page: www.uwosh.edu/library.